We have all seen it: a huge sensation, a star burning brightly and boldly. But then, the star crashes down, never to resurface except in commercials for yogurt and the occasional magazine shot that boasts a collection of “Hollywood Has-Beens: Where Are They Now?” Beautiful poetry, films and plays have been written on the idea that there is an upper limit to the number of stars our world can worship and, thus, some must fall. But not Beyoncé. Never Beyoncé.

The undergraduate deans office and Student Assembly recently increased funding for the “Take a Faculty Member to Breakfast or Lunch” program, which allows students and faculty to engage in conversation over a subsidized meal.

At an open forum in Filene Auditorium yesterday evening, the College proposed three potential locations for a new campus biomass heating facility: the south end of the Hanover Country Club’s golf course, the hill behind the Dewey parking lot and an area of College property two miles south of campus along Route 120. An audience of around 20 community members voiced their concerns and provided input on the possible locations for the plant.

Alabama’s newest abortion law is a series of losses: for women, for science and for the Republican Party. On May 15, Alabama’s Governor, Kay Ivey (R) signed into law a near-total ban on abortion with the exception of when a mother’s life is at risk or the case of a lethal fetal anomaly. The law criminalizes abortion, with clauses indicating that doctors could face up to 99 years in prison for performing an abortion in the state. While the law clearly opposes the national strides made in legalizing abortion and liberating women’s bodies, it is not your routine Republican policy. Alabama’s restrictive abortion law is out of sync with just about every interest group and political party, and with its passing, the rallying power of the Republican Party’s pro-life posture is dwindling in intensity. Come 2020, Republicans will start losing districts if they do not abandon this hard-line stance against abortion.

I’m a student athlete. Upon reading Osman Khan ’21’s April 26 column, “Admitting Our Athletes,” in The Dartmouth, I felt two initial reactions. First, I felt angry and hurt that another student so strongly believed that my teammates and I might not belong at the institution we worked so hard to be a part of. And secondly, I felt resentment toward The Dartmouth for publishing an article demonstrating a concerning lack of awareness of how so many students felt about campus athletics.

When I first enrolled as a Ph.D. student at Dartmouth, I understood that I was choosing to do graduate work at an undergraduate-focused college. That was one of the main reasons I chose Dartmouth: If I ultimately wanted to teach and be a professor, why not learn from some of the best undergraduate instructors in the world? I didn’t anticipate that as a graduate student I would often be an after-thought — expected to shut up and do my work and not really be a part of the Dartmouth community. But make no mistake, graduate students are fundamental to the success of the College, and it is about time the institution acted like it.

China’s manufacturing prowess is no secret. In the 40 years since its market reforms, China has grown to become the world’s leading player in manufacturing, contributing 20 percent of global output. And the ubiquity of the “Made in China” moniker on everyday items is such that China’s preeminence often seems untouchable. This is, however, not the case. The features of the Chinese economy that have facilitated the country’s meteoric rise in manufacturing are dissolving. Manufacturing jobs are increasingly leaving China and moving abroad. And the ongoing China-U.S. trade war is only accelerating the flight of manufacturing from the Middle Kingdom.

While a push to legalize recreational marijuana in New Hampshire might be stalled for the foreseeable future in the state legislature, a bill that would expand options for medical marijuana users in the state is making its way toward the desk of Gov. Chris Sununu (R). If passed and approved, the bill would allow certified patients to grow a limited number of plants themselves.

Amid a nationwide increase in cases challenging results of college-led sexual misconduct investigations, last month, the College responded to the most recent case challenging its own disciplinary process. On April 30, the College filed its response to a lawsuit alleging that it led an “unfair” and biased investigation resulting in the wrongful expulsion of a male student accused of sexual assault. Dartmouth has denied the claims put forth in the complaint and has demanded a trial by jury “on all claims so triable.”

Four students were arrested during this year’s Green Key weekend — a decrease from last year’s 11 arrests and 2017’s 10 arrests, according to Hanover Police lieutenant Scott Rathburn. Interim director of Dartmouth Safety and Security Keysi Montás said that the total number of incidents reported to Safety and Security during the weekend was slightly higher, but in the same general range as previous years.

Next fall, Dartmouth will welcome members of the Class of 2023 from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Guam, and from 69 other countries, making it the most geographically diverse class in the College’s history. Accordingly, these students will also be graduates of all different types of high schools, ranging from elite preparatory schools in the northeast to small public schools in the south. Regardless of their background, however, they all experience the same phenomenon upon their arrival to the College: the grind.

“The grind never stops” — it’s a phrase that is all too familiar to Dartmouth students. It evokes memories of panic-driven all-nighters, seemingly never-ending to-do lists and calendars that just never seem to be empty. Sure, there are times when I find work unenjoyable — when I’ve spent hours on a problem set, and all I want to do is take a nap and maybe change my major. There are also times when work seems completely pointless — when I question if I’ll ever really use any of this information outside of class. Yet, for all of those times of panic, there are moments of passion. There are moments when I’m reminded of what all this work leads to: change: Real, physical, future-altering change. Those are the moments that make “the grind” seem worthwhile.

After a fun Green Key filled with everything but work, we’re back to the grind as Week 9 sets into full swing and finals slowly creep up. Our break from routine was short-lived, and the conversations about our exciting and wild weekends are quickly turning into complaints about all the studying and catching-up we have to do. At a school where “hustle culture” is seen and felt on a routine basis, it’s easy for us to equate our productivity with our self-worth, and we wonder if there’s even such a thing as a true day off. Sunny afternoons on the Green or Sunday Foco brunches with friends are too often cut short to go back to the library and get work done because, as the saying goes, “the grind don’t stop.”

Humans are the greatest threat to conservation and biodiversity today. The greenhouse gases that we generate alter the climate, and, barring any major changes, continued growth of the human population will increase the carbon footprint of our species. Better technology and decreased consumption can ameliorate this situation, but they cannot currently stop it. In order to curb our carbon footprint, people must begin to monitor their growth as a species, particularly in the United States, where overconsumption is the norm. Unfortunately, legislators are removing women’s rights to make that decision as government officials in some conservative states are pushing bills to severely restrict abortion. Not only does this unfairly govern women’s bodies; it also diminishes their control over their ecological legacies. An increasing human population presents a serious threat to the planet’s future, and without access to abortion, legislators are stealing women’s right to control their own personal ecological legacies.

This year’s Met Gala opened with the theme of “camp,” and the Gala’s attendants made attempts at capturing this aesthetic, some more successfully than others. Sontag, a pop culture theorist known for defining the term, explains the eponymous theme as a love of “artifice and exaggeration.”As it were, an object or event is more likely to be campy when it is unaware of its exaggerated, “so bad that it’s good” quality.

BDSM is a topic of fascination that has been rising bit by bit outside of the shadow of stigma in recent years. With videos like Buzzfeed’s “Couples Try Bondage For The First Time,” released two years ago, and “I Became A Dominatrix To Control My Anxiety,” released just a year and a half after — with plenty of other tangentially related videos in between — it’s clear that BDSM is no longer something people are ashamed of talking about. If anything, kinky has become cool, and there’s a large market of people who want to know more.